EVANSVILLE, Ind. — When Glenn Gass developed his first rock and roll history class at Indiana University in 1982 it wasn’t exactly a hit among his peers.

Pop music didn’t seem to have a history worth preserving, Gass recalled. Pop music was for one generation, he said, and then the next generation had its own version and so on.

As a composition major, Gass knew enough about music and firmly felt The Beatles were a “great gift to the musical world.”

But those were fighting words in the early 80s at the IU School of Music.

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“I had the head of the musicology department ask how I could teach even one minute of musical garbage,” Gass said. “To him rock and roll was just noise. And he wasn’t even trying to be insulting, he was just baffled by how anyone could even listen to that junk.”

Now his courses on the history and cultural impact of rock and popular music are the "longest running courses of their kind in the world."

On April 15, the IU provost professor of music in general studies at the Jacobs School of Music will speak about the impact of The Beatles — something he said would not have happened in 1982.

Gass will present “She Loves You to Sgt. Pepper: Rock & Roll Becomes High Art” as the third speaker in the annual Shoulders Family Commons Lecture Series. The presentation is 2 p.m. April 15 in the Shoulders Family Commons at Harrison High School, 211 Fielding Road in Evansville.

The event is free and open to the public.

In honor of its many Harrison and IU graduates, Evansville native, attorney and IU Trustee Pat Shoulders said the family contributed a naming gift in 2011 to rename the center of the school the Shoulders Family Commons. Shoulders said the family strives to bring “some intellectual capital to the commons” available to the public for free.

Gass specializes in a series of courses he developed on the history of rock and popular music that was the first to be offered through a music school. He is also the author of "A History of Rock Music: The Rock & Roll Era" (MCGraw-Hill, 1994).

So, are The Beatles still relevant more than 50 years after their first single?

"That's a good question," Gass said.

The Beatles don't need an advocate anymore, he said, and they don't need history lessons.

"In the span of three to four years they made it possible to talk about rock and roll as an art form with a straight face which would have been ridiculous in the 50s with 'Hound Dog' and Jerry Lee Lewis," Gass said. "I mean that stuff is great too, but nobody thought of it as art, it was just rebellious dance music."

Mozart is the only other person Gass could think of that made such a dramatic change in such a short time like The Beatles did.

And to do it as a group effort? That's even rarer in art, he said.

"It will be a celebration with a focus on the artistic leaps they made in such a short time," Gass said of the event. "They went from rock and roll as a boy band phenomenon with girls screaming at them, to this album you’d listen to like you’d listen to a Beethoven symphony. That’s an incredibly artistic leap in any art."

At the presentation, Gass plans to play many songs and videos. He hopes there is a mix of all ages in the audience.

"I think it’s more a chance to just celebrate how truly astonishing they were and how fortunate we were that those of us that are old enough lived in a time of The Beatles," he said. "And if you didn’t this music still sounds just as good now as it did 50-plus years ago."

As more time passes, Gass believes people continue to realize how "extraordinarily special" The Beatles were. Their music isn't going stale, he said, and nothing will take their place.

"Their music is universally appealing," he said. "They’re a great gift to the world, and we’re lucky to live in a time there were Beatles."